Rain delays conspire against Harry King in Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup at Silverstone

Credit: Porsche Motosport

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Maidenhead's Harry King was thwarted by a series of delays and rain breaks as he failed to finish on the podium in the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup Championship at Silverstone this weekend.

Outside factors appeared to conspire against the BWT Lechner Racing driver, however, he admitted afterwards that he and the team simply didn't have the pace to challenge for a top three finish at his home event.

Despite this, King remains in title contention and is still second in the championship standings heading into the next race at the Hungaroring in Hungary.

King produced an astonishing recovery drive in the previous event at the Red Bull Ring in Austria to finish second and secure his third straight podium on the spin heading into Silverstone.

This despite being tipped into a half-spin on lap one of the race.

The Maidenhead-based rider was looking forward to building on that form at his home event and attempting to cut into the lead currently held by Larry ten Voorde.

Despite tricky, changeable conditions in free practice, King was right at the sharp end in terms of race pace and lap times, with the BRDC driver initially leading the way before dropping back to P2 when one of his rivals had a quicker lap reinstated.

Regardless, King was clearly in good form and had a car to match that confidence going into qualifying on Saturday. In a session which began in damp conditions and dried out as the drivers put down their respective lap times, King secured a place on the second row of the grid having clocked the fourth fastest time.

The rain continued to play havoc with the Silverstone schedule and there was a heavy downpour prior to the start of Sunday's race meaning it started behind a safety car.

However, after less than a lap it soon became clear that conditions were just too wet and dangerous for the race to get safely underway.

With standing water over parts of the circuit, the race was delayed for 20 minutes before finally getting underway from lap 3. Eager to make up ground on the leaders, King immediately put pressure on Alessandro Ghiretti for third and a fine move on lap four saw him take the Italian on the outside going into the Luffield turn.

Keen to try and chase down Larry ten Voorde and Marvin Klein ahead, King was instead forced to defend an attack from teammate Robert de Haan, with the Briton dropping back to fourth spot.

He managed to hold this position as the laps counted down and made-up ground on the cars ahead of him, however, any chances of moving into a podium position were snatched away when Huub van Eindhoven spun off and the safety car was deployed again.

Unfortunately for King, the delays at the start of the race meant the action was then halted for the time limit and the safety car was brought back out to bring the field in to take the chequered flag, leaving King in fourth place.

“For whatever reason we just didn’t have the outright pace this weekend, which is a shame at my home event,” he said.

“However, it’s a mark of how strong our season has been to date if finishing in fourth is a disappointing result, and we have a few weekends now to look over all the data from this event to make sure we come out fighting when we get to Hungary for the next round.

“Having won from pole at the Hungaroring last season, my focus is firmly on repeating that result to keep the pressure on in the championship battle.”